Comments on: Riotous Littleport

Riotous Littleport

plep — Sun, 20 Jun 2004 07:48:07 -0800

Riotous Littleport. The deportation of an English village to Australia. BBC article with links to other interesting articles on immigration and emigration on the page.

By: kavasa

kavasa — Sun, 20 Jun 2004 09:54:20 -0800

Wow, what a great site. I'm just reading article after article and it's fascinating stuff. Much love fo' my brothas and sistas in the beeb.

By: spazzm

spazzm — Sun, 20 Jun 2004 10:32:07 -0800

Cool.

By: rory

rory — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 01:54:57 -0800

In the early 18th Century however they had a practical solution for dealing with excess numbers of prisoners; they were forcibly shipped off to British penal colonies in America. This solution continued successfully, for the government at least, until the American Civil War in 1860 brought it to an abrupt end. Uh, what? Try 'American War of Independence' and '1776'. Which is why the penal colony of New South Wales was founded in 1788, as any Aussie can tell you. An error of this magnitude on the first page isn't very encouraging.

By: Shane

Shane — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 07:38:47 -0800

Thanks, plep, this is a brilliant story. They discussed the plight of their community as a whole, which had been enraged by the news that three fellow labourers had been sacked by local farmer and landowner Henry Martin. Martin was thought to have been wealthy enough to keep them employed, as he maintained a conspicuously affluent lifestyle, regularly spending more than the combined wages of his three employees. Rich pain-in-the-ass landowners seemed to be quite a problem back then. I'm thinking of the agrarian unrest in Ireland that led up to the Levellers and other predecessors of the IRA. I love stories of old Australia and its roots. Charles Bateson's book "The Convict Ships 1787-1868" is on my reading list now. I think I need to give Illywhacker by Peter Carey another read, too ;-)

By: anastasiav

anastasiav — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 07:39:36 -0800

I love you, Plep. Thanks for posting this.